Do Gamers Enjoy Dying in First-Person-Shooters?

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Brandon Erickson has an interesting post about an experiment on players' emotional reactions to killing and being killed in a first-person shooters (FPS) with a group of students who played James Bond 007: Nightfire while their facial expressions and physiological activity were tracked and recorded moment-to-moment via electrodes and various other monitoring equipment. The study found that "death of the player's own character...appear[s] to increase some aspects of positive emotion." The authors believe this may result from the temporary "relief from engagement" brought about by character death. "Part of this has to do with the intriguing aesthetic question of precisely how the first-person-shooter represents the player after the moment of death," says Clive Thompson. "This sudden switch in camera angle — from first person to third person — is, in essence, a classic out-of-body experience, of exactly the sort people describe in near-death experiences. And much like real-life near-death experiences, it tends to suffuse me with a curiously zen-like feeling." An abstract of the original article, "The psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic emotional responses to violent video game events" is available on the web." Obnoxiously this alleged scholarly research is not available for free, so we'll just have to speculate wildly what it says based on the abstract.

Comments

Perhaps...

[Kagura]

Perhaps they enjoy the emotional transaction that takes place at time of death? I enjoy making small bets often and challenging other people to tiny competitions for no reason, simply because of the "Awwww, I lost and you won" transaction that takes place. I don't know if other people feel this, but I know that I do. For small things that don't matter, I am not terribly concerned with winning or losing.

Maybe it's like gambling

[wattrlz]

When you loose it makes you the underdog, so your final victory will just be that much more glorius when fate smiles on you once again.

death for a good cause is satisfying

[Kristoph]

I don't know about first person shooters but I must say that in WoW I get a certain satisfaction from dying 'in the name of the cause', like causing an alliance wipe in AV on Galv with a last ditch fear or dropping from the cliff onto the GM to keep the flag from getting capped.

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Mr. Toad's Wild Ride: ends in hell

[dpbsmith]

The former Walt Disney World attraction, "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride," ended with the car breaking through railroad crossing gates and heading down the railroad tracks, apparently directly toward an oncoming train. In reality, all that is there besides the sound effects is a dazzlingly bright headlight, making it almost impossible to see that you are heading toward a doorway in the black-painted room.

As you emerge after your "collision," the final scene in the ride show numerous devils with tridents.

If Walt Disney, always a good judge of such things, thought that kids would enjoy the virtual experience, not merely of dying, but of being consigned to eternal damnation, it does not seems a far stretch to assume that gamers may enjoy it as well.

Re:I prefer instant blackout

[IndustrialComplex]

You should give Natural Selection www.unknownworlds.com/ns/ a try. When I played it was based on the HL engine and gave you two options, marines or aliens for a team.

One person on the marines was the 'commander' and had a top down C&C style view. He could give orders, set waypoints, hand out weapons, and progress through an upgrade tree. The rest of the marines were just plain old FPS style, but relied on the commander to keep them supplied as they fought.

The aliens on the other hand, had no leader, but information was shared between them (If one alien saw an enemy, the rest of the players could 'sense' that enemy, and you would receive notification that an area was under attack, etc. Just no central leadership mode)

It was a game that I greatly enjoyed. I remember it when it was fairly beta, had a few chats with Charlie Cleveland (he likely won't remember, but I did appreciate his discussions about building up Unknown Worlds). I sincerely hope that it grows since it got a lot of things 'right'.